COMMENTARY : Money Has Taken Fun Out of Sports

It shouldn’t have taken the entire year to figure it out. Everything about sports used to be fun. The personalities, the records, and even the pomp used to help get everybody fired up for the circumstance, better known as the games.

Now sports -- excluding the games -- has lost its focus. The obvious problem is the money, so disproportionate, that it doesn’t even seem real. Monopoly money, we call it in the biz. We as fans aren’t spending it, therefore, we let it slide and Gary Payton is getting paid more than $2 million this year to be an average point guard in the NBA ...

Down the street, there’s a pregnant woman holding down two jobs, neither of which provides medical benefits, and her husband’s benefits don’t include paying the hospital bills either.

Why?

Our society doesn’t cater to the working class. Only the rich and famous.

That’s what has finally sunk in. The world of sports is exacerbating the problem. The guys are ALL making too much money, therefore it’s OK, we say. Well, it’s not. The most ridiculous aspect of going to NBA games year after year is to see how 90 percent of the players are black and 90 percent of the crowd is white. Environmentally, the young black athletes go to college hoping to become professional athletes. Then if (when) they don’t make it, nobody is there to change the signals. College administrators suddenly vanish. Maybe they never were there for them in the first place, and the coaches are so unstable in their jobs, they never look back.

Greed and capitalism abound. We all know that. The gluttonous egos of the ownership, management, and yes (I’m sorry to admit), the media, have carried it beyond the games. They are fun until someone gets brutally injured, but even then, that’s part of the game.

In most cases that’s true. The players enter the field of battle, knowing their knees, arms, or even more literally, their necks are on the line every moment. That justifies them making good money. The reality is the gluttony off the field. The perspective is gone.

The reaction to Zeke Mowatt and some of his New England Patriot teammates sexual harassment of Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson put it all in the best of perspective. Clearly, the $25,000 total NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue fined Mowatt and the Patriots was a pathetic statement of not only Tagliabue, but again, the sports society.

It was astounding to hear the reaction of educated people, most of whom I would consider open-minded, jump to the players’ defense. A woman didn’t belong in the locker room.

That is a crock.

I didn’t write anything immediately, like so many others, only because we feared all of us would lose access to the locker rooms.

That was my mistake. It reflects the stranglehold sports has on us. Because Tagliabue’s research found Mowatt to be guilty of harassment, he should have been suspended for the remainder of the season, at least.

Of course, she should be in the locker room. She BELONGS in the locker room. It’s her job. A portion of the players’ job is to be available to the media in the locker room. Most, perhaps 85 percent or more, of the professional athletes are great about interviews, and put their pants on before the locker room fills up.

But there are some who while being interviewed, don’t get dressed first and are mindless, classless and offensive. This has nothing to do with the gender of the reporter in the locker room: It’s repulsive to men, too. We’re not talking about a domain. This is a work place for young, wealthy athletes and the media whose responsibility it is to report to the public.

That’s all, and now Lisa Olson’s job will never be the same.

The past 70 years of sports have created this mystique that makes anything OK for the athletes from the time they draw special attention as early as elementary school. That coaches “rattle the cages,” of players, whether they are 6 years old or six-year NFL veterans is absurd. Short of special parenting and the infinitesimal chance they will make it in professional sports, they’ll have to face adulthood without a prayer because of the years in a fantasy environment.

Men are supposed to be macho.

Women are supposed to be macho too if they want to play the same games.

Those now have blossomed into war games, with President Bush acting as if he’s Knute Rockne and wanting our hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle East to “kick some ass.” Well, Mr. President, in those hundreds of thousands of macho men and women are stunned fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. Too many already have died. Too many more will while you’re on the golf course.

Bush’s desire to be macho, colored with greed, comes right out of the locker room and field of play into our lives. This will to dominate and gobble up the remains has killed the national economy and ultimately its people. It’s hard to fathom any of it would be possible in this day and age, were it not for the blanket adoration of sports.

My resolution is to remain enlightened enough to remember these are nothing more than games people play to entertain others. These are not national heroes to be emulated. They are athletes who are great at what they do. Just as Jimi Hendrix played guitar and John Belushi acted, Len Bias dunked. We laughed, we cried and then they died.

Let’s keep it all in perspective this year. Then maybe we can stop worrying about kicking ass where we’re not wanted and helping each other keep it together at home.